Hi there! The paragraph below is from the Entertainment Section of a broadsheet. The writer made two errors, which are underlined in red.
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| Article source: Manila Bulletin |
Together with
As you can see from the paragraph, the writer tried to join two subjects using the conjunction together with. The first subject, together with its modifiers, is Singer-actor and celebrity endorser Sam Milby. The second subject, together with its modifier, is commercial model Mikaela Lagdameo. The writer then used the verb are, thinking that the subject of her sentence is plural.
What's wrong with this?
Well, when we join two nouns using the phrase together with to form the subject of a sentence, the resulting subject is still singular. (If the first noun is plural, however, the subject is plural, of course. ) Unlike the conjunction and, the phrase together with does not make a subject plural. It has the same function as as well as, in addition to, in conjunction with, along with, etc. All of these phrases also do not combine two singular nouns to form a plural subject. As explained by commnet.edu, the nouns that come after together with merely modify the first noun (Sam Milby in this case). An error of this kind is likely to occur when the writer forgets to use commas to set off the together-with phrase. My paragraph above uses two sentences that demonstrate this.
Here are more examples:
The principal, together with the class presidents, is leading a crusade against campus violence.
Severus Snape, along with the Death Eaters, flees from Hogwarts after killing Dumbledore.
Idiom: Take after
The writer also used the phrase take after when the intended meaning was to replace. She was referring to two new endorsers replacing the previous ones. What's wrong with this? The phrase take after is an idiom that means "to resemble in appearance". For example, a son who takes after his deceased father, who had brown hair and round eyes. Again, "to take after" is to resemble in appearance.
There you go. Two more lessons from the mistakes of a pro!
1 comments:
Along with the verb in the first sentence, I think "the new endorsers" should be singular: "the new endorser."
I wasn't sure what the writer meant by "take after," but I assumed it meant "join," in which case "the past celebrity endorsers such as" should be "past celebrity endorsers such as" (or better, "past celebrity endorsers including").
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